Vivaldi's Virgins Read online

  Most recently I have been working on the maestro’s first concerto in the series he says he will call L’Estro Armonico. He told us that only he and we will know that he has named it thus for the way in which this entire institution hangs upon the monthly moods and bleeding of its female population—l’estro, for the time when female animals are in heat.

  The maestro boasts that he can predict within a day when we’ll all come undone with cramps and crying fits, because two weeks before, we always play with the most fantastic frenzy and fancy—our own version of l’estro, as he chooses to call it. His eyes sparkle with wickedness when he says such things. And yet we know the maestro values our skill nearly as much as he values his own. Certainly because we are the only means by which his music can reach the ears of the world—and the music the world hears will only be as great as our performance of it.

  Unlike the internal teachers, who see us as their wards and treat us like children, the maestro looks at us first and foremost as musicians. I don’t think he ever gives much thought at all to our age.

  He has been pushing us especially hard to perfect our performance of twelve sonatas he recently finished writing. We are to play these on some as yet unspecified date for a highly exalted personage whose name the maestro refuses to divulge. To hear him speak, the entire future of his career as a composer—to say nothing of the future of the Republic—is in our hands. And we are lazy, and vain, and we laugh too much, and God will punish us if we don’t play the music as it’s meant to be played. The maestro prays and rails at us and then begs and cajoles us, and brings us sweets and pulls funny faces. But by the end of our rehearsal, he has more often than not squeezed the music out of us that he wants.

  Yesterday, Bernardina—who is one of the best among the younger violinists, despite her one blind eye—begged off rehearsal because of cramps. The maestro was in a froth of aggravation.

  Taller than I by a handsbreadth, Bernardina delights in looking down on me—though I have twice won out when we have all been set to play against each other. Her freckled face turned bright red both times, and she looked as if she hoped that God would strike me dead.

  I know that when my elders speak about becoming a woman they are speaking of this business of frayed tempers, cramps, and blood. It happened earlier this year to Giulietta, who is my best friend, despite Marietta’s claims to that position.

  I heard Giulietta’s cries before I’d chased away the night’s dreams. “I am dying! I bleed—oh, I am wounded!” I threw back the covers and both saw and smelled the brownish red blood on the bedclothes. Although I thought we had both been wounded, I felt no pain. And then I saw with horror that the blood was coming from between Giulietta’s legs.

  A few of the older girls roused themselves from their beds and then gathered round us with sponges and water and clean robes. “You are not wounded, Giulietta, you silly goose,” they told her. “You are a woman now. Say your prayers and put these rags in your knickers!” They went away to breakfast, laughing and talking as if this were something perfectly normal.

  Pretty Giulietta, with her creamy skin and soft brown locks that curl all on their own, clutched her belly and said that she was sure she had been poisoned, because her insides ached so.

  Every month now, Giulietta bleeds. She and all the other older girls and all of the women here who do not yet have hair on their chin. All of them bleeding at the same time. All of them, in the days just before their blood, scowling and short of temper and weeping without reason.

  And all because Eve bit into that apple so long ago! I feel sure that if Eve had only a hint of the grief she would visit upon her daughters, she would never have allowed herself to be tempted to that first bite, but would have foresworn apples forever.

  I do not look forward with gladness to my womanhood. Just last week, Prudenza—one of the older, prettier members of the coro and one of the most celebrated sopranos of all the ospedali—was brought to the parlatorio of the orphanage for the sort of interview each one of us both dreads and dreams of.

  The parlatorio is the great vaulted room where you would come to visit me, if you came to visit. It’s much the same, I’m told, as the visiting room of any convent. Divided from the rest of the ospedale by a lacelike metal grille, it is our window to the outside world. We can see and be seen there, but touching is forbidden.

  Having learned that she had relatives at the convent of San Francesco della Vigna, Prudenza petitioned the governors last year for permission to take vows. None of us believed they’d let her go. She is a well-known singer whose presence accounts for the rental of many chairs at our concerts—and her beauty is so fabled that many in the audience come in hopes of catching a glimpse of her as much as to hear us perform.

  The Prioress herself brought Prudenza to the visitors’ side of the parlatorio through a secret door. There she was unveiled before a masked stranger, an obviously ancient gentleman with bent shoulders and silver hair.

  The governors had decided to grant Prudenza’s request. But then one of them—Signor Giovanni Battista Morotti—thought that perhaps he would offer the Pietà’s star singer a different kind of veil. While this graybeard looked on from a distance, his entourage of female family members told Prudenza to turn this way and that, examined her hair, and even pried her lips open to look at her teeth before the gentleman finally bowed and thanked her.

  We heard the whole story whispered in between mouthfuls, and interleaved with the day’s sacred text, during supper. Yesterday the Prioress called Prudenza to her office and presented her with an offer of marriage from Signor Morotti. If she wishes to keep the dowry of two hundred ducats provided for each of us who marries, both Prudenza and her aged bridegroom—who is noble but not particularly rich—must give their signed promise that she’ll never again perform.

  I swear to you that I would sooner promise to cut off my hands. It is beyond my understanding how any one of us could make such a promise. Who will Prudenza be without her golden voice? How will God hear her?

  Giulietta thinks my first blood is coming, and that is what gnaws at me. But it is the second movement of the maestro’s new concerto that crawls through my belly like the serpent who tempted Eve.

  After the maestro had shamed us with his talk of monthly bleeding, I made a solemn oath to the Virgin to learn to play my part with skill that would keep him from ever again speaking of us in the same breath as animals.

  The first movement went beautifully well, the notes yielding, sweetening as my fingers found their hiding places and called them into the air. They followed my bow as if I were the leader of a great army of musician warriors: I made them sing.

  That was the first three days, one blurring into the next. I only knew it had been three days because Sister Laura said I had better stop and do something else for a while. She urged me to come into the courtyard, where Signora Olivia’s peonies have begun to bloom. The sun hurt my eyes. I did not want to smell flowers or play badminton. I longed to be inside the echoing stone walls again. I wanted to work on the largo.

  Again, I felt the strength to fulfill my promise to the Virgin. It was as if my fingers, not my eyes, were reading the flurry of notes that danced across the page, scrawled in haste in one of the maestro’s fits of inspiration. Only someone like myself, well used to reading his hand, could make out the notes from the blots of ink where he’d broken his quill.

  Giulietta and I saw him composing this concerto in the sacristy. We had been spying on the maestro, because he is so odd and amusing to watch while he composes. He pulls his cap off and buries his fingers in his red hair and sometimes weeps as if it were as hot as its color and he were a martyr in the flames. He writes and writes, dipping his pen and wiping his eyes, a great stack of quills before him, the broken ones flying over his shoulder as if flying back to the birds they came from. He coughs, especially in the months of fall or spring, clutching at his chest with one hand while writing with the other. Then he stands before the clavicembalo, picking out the notes he has written with the most terrible look on his face, like a prisoner who is about to get a beating. And then something happens, something invisible to us but very real to him, by the look in his eyes. It is as if the invisible jailor has unlocked the chains binding the maestro to his prison walls. As if Christus himself has reached out His hand and touched the maestro’s tears. He weeps again, but this time for joy. Then he picks up the violin, closes his eyes and plays.

  Of course it is hateful to him if we do not play the music the way he has heard it, whispered to him by angels. The color drains from his face. He mutters things, terrible things, about fanciulle, virgin girls. How can a gaggle of cloistered virgins possibly understand music that springs from the loins of a man? We know it is a sin for him, a priest, to speak this way. And yet I know he speaks without knowing how he wounds us. “Virgins!” he shouts, looking heavenward and sweeping out of the room, his black robes like a storm cloud racing across the sky, bringing rain.

  And there we are, the famous orphan musicians of the Pietà, not daring to look at one another. Ashamed that we have failed him yet again.

  It was because of my solemn oath to the Virgin that I kept trying and trying to play the third movement, the allegro, as an angel might play it. An angry angel. I played until the pain in my bowing arm was so great that tears spilled out of my eyes. I saw them, like drops of rain, on the beautiful wood of the violin. I think it was Giulietta who went to call Sister Laura, who gently but very firmly unclasped my hand from the neck of the instrument and took it away from me. “But the allegro—I have not found it yet!” I cried, as mad as the maestro himself.

  Again, I could not sleep that night, last night. There was the pain in my shoulder that kept me awake. But more than this, there was a sense of—I don’t have any words to describe the sensations that kept me from sleep. Demons, perhaps. A sense of unworthiness so staggering that I could not keep myself upright under its weight. And yet I could not sleep.

  I didn’t touch the bowl of polenta that Giulietta brought to me from the kitchen this morning, even though she’d drizzled it with honey and cream just the way I like it. Sister Laura came in then and sat by me. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she spoke in that voice I have come to know so well, as low and familiar as the bell of San Marco that signals the beginning and end of every workday for all those who live outside these walls. “Maestro Vivaldi composes some of the most difficult music that has ever been composed for the violin. You must not fault yourself if you find it difficult to play.”

  I started crying then.

  She lifted my chin and made me look into her eyes, so blue and mild. “God himself would have trouble with that allegro.”

  Even after she let go of my chin, I kept my eyes locked on hers, looking for the secret thing that allows her to always be so steady and calm.

  Oh Mother, if this letter has truly reached you, hear me! Would that I could ask for your help not in words, as clumsy and ugly as the flies that gather in the corners of the windows in summertime, but with the notes of my violin.

  I write to you now a girl, still a girl. A virgin who cannot find the key to playing music that comes from a man’s loins. Who cannot play the allegro.

  I beg you to pray for me.

  Your daughter,

  Anna Maria dal Violin,

  Student of Maestro Vivaldi

  I had an answer to my prayers that autumn. A new girl was brought to the Pietà—not an unwanted child, but a paying student from Saxony. She had excellent training and already played quite well.

  Even now, there is usually at least one such girl every year, sent to board with us until she reaches the age of seventeen. They are not, as we are, bound for ten years to perform and teach in exchange for the charity bestowed upon us, and to train two replacements if and when we choose to marry or take the veil. For these students from the outside, the Pietà is only a way station on the road to an advantageous marriage and the production of heirs.

  These girls bring with them a breath of worlds unknown to inmates of the ospedale, worlds where music is not necessarily at the center of one’s existence. They come with their talk of fashion, families, and stolen kisses.

  Claudia, as a violinist, was placed under my special care. I taught her every trick I knew of the Italian style, helped her with her grammar, and acquainted her with our routine. But I was ever more her student than her teacher.

  Although only two years older than I, Claudia was already womanly and wise in the ways of the world. I remember how it startled me to see how the maestro clearly took note of her bosom. I was uncomfortable thinking of the maestro—or any priest—as a man. I cannot say that I am overly comfortable with the thought now, even though I know full well that it is a fact of life. It is their very manhood that makes their vows of celibacy both necessary and so difficult to achieve.

  It was Claudia who told me, in her imperfect Italian, how important it is to remember that all men—whether noblemen or beggars, priests or procurers—have the same one thing in common, to which they are commonly in thrall.

  Shortly after her arrival, the maestro had one of his fits of temper, during which he tore at his hair and wept at the innocence that keeps us from playing with the passion demanded by his music. I looked over to see how Claudia would react. To my surprise, she sat there with an enigmatic smile on her face, looking well satisfied with herself.

  That night was particularly cold. Most of us were sleeping in twos, as was our wont in wintertime, even though, the year before, we had each earned the right to our own bed. I was just drifting off, with Claudia’s arms wrapped around me, when she whispered into my ear.

  “Anna Maria, I can teach you the secret of this passion your maestro wants you to feel.”

  My eyes were still half closed with sleep, and sleep had come only with difficulty because of the cold. “I am a virtuous girl,” I muttered, resentful at being wakened.

  “And you can remain one. I promise you! Your virtue will be unsullied. But you will bring your maestro great joy.” She propped herself up, leaning back on her elbows.

  I turned to look at her. “You speak in riddles,” I said crossly. Even though the darkness was impenetrable, I could sense Claudia’s smile.

  “Here, let me show you!”

  “Show me? Here? In the dormitory?”

  “There is no better place.”

  She sat closer still, speaking in little more than a whisper. “Every woman, Anna Maria—and every girl—has a secret place on her body. If you stroke it in just the right way, it makes the body quiver and make music like the strings of your violin.”

  I lay back down, angry to be mocked in this way. “Go to sleep, Claudia! We need to be at our best for the rehearsal tomorrow.”

  She shook my shoulder. “Which is exactly why I am telling you this tonight, Annina.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Annina,’” I said. I thought about how I used to believe that the music made by the coro came from the girls’ bodies. I couldn’t guess how this Saxon witch came to know of my childish folly.

  “Look.” She pulled me upright again. “Here, do what I do.”

  My eyes by then had begun to grow accustomed to the darkness. Claudia positioned herself as if playing the cello, her knees splayed. “It’s here,” she said, reaching under her nightclothes. “You have one, too. It’s like—I don’t know the word in your language.” She took her hand out and then cupped her other hand around her finger, pantomiming a bell. “The little piece that makes it ring. Can you find it?”

  I reached under my nightclothes. How was it I’d never noticed before? When I touched it, it was exactly as if I were a violin. I felt the touch of my fingers vibrate in every part of my body, but especially the tips of my breasts and the arches of my feet.

  I saw that Claudia had closed her eyes. I did the same.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I said, gasping a little, because my breath was suddenly labored, as if I’d been climbing stairs.

  “Stroke it just as you stroke the strings of your violin, Anna Maria dal Violin.”

  “The strings of my violin don’t grow wet when I stroke them.”

  “Think of the sonata we’re playing tomorrow—of the allegro. And when we’re playing the allegro tomorrow, think of this!”

  I could not answer her. The urge to keep stroking was suddenly larger than everything else, so large and so loud that everything else disappeared. I forgot where I was; I forgot who I was. There was only the urgent need to—I knew not what. And then—oh, blessed Mother of God—my body rang with the joyful force of all the bells of la Serenissima on Easter morning.

  It was as if I’d fallen into the sea during a storm and been washed up on the shore, half drowned, half dead, but like one who has seen the face of God.

  When I woke the next morning, I wondered if it had all been a dream. But there was Claudia sitting over me, smiling her little catlike smile.

  I smiled back at her.

  “Don’t forget to think of it while you’re playing today.”

  “I will think of nothing else!” I assured her. “I must tell Giulietta. She must think of it while she is playing her cello today!”

  I told Giulietta (and drowned in that sea again in the telling), and I think Giulietta must have told others in her turn.

  When we all gathered for rehearsal, it was a pale-faced, fever-eyed group of girls who faced the maestro. “What’s this?” he muttered. “Have I misread my calendar?”

  From the moment we began playing, it was clear to all of us—but most of all to him—that everything had changed. We played with brio. We played with passion. We played with urgency. We played so that we were panting at the end, and I would not be surprised if some of our bells were ringing.

  The maestro lowered his hands and stared at us with disbelief. “I’m dreaming,” was all he said at first. And then, with an expression of rapture filling his eyes: “How did this happen?”